The letter complains of lack of attention that C++ has, but I don't recall much attention given to C either, despite the fact that Linux is written in C. As C++ is a superset of C, let's have something on C first.

I have dabbled in C, largely relying on an old (1990) secondhand book on Turbo C++. The first half of the book teaches C, then goes on to C++. The book assumes DOS is your platform (!) and many things have clearly changed since then anyway such as gets(), which the book uses all over the place, now being deprecated; but I don't want to buy another book until and unless I find one specific to gcc. I have not found any good tutorials on the Web either.

Despite it being a superset of C, C++ code looks radically different to my eyes, and ugly with it. I have known, or know of, C coders who say that C++ is indeed horrible, including Linus Torvalds himself :-